Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/260

246 saying rather that autopsy, biopsy, and specified surgical materials "will be forwarded" as directed. 2

The combined effect of a rapidly increasing Army and more positive directions for the submittal of pathological specimens was to increase the workload of the Museum to 3,500 or 4,000 "cases" per month— as many as had been handled in a full 12 months before the expansion began. By 1943, autopsy materials and records were flowing into the Museum at the rate of 15 per day, a figure which increased before the end of the war to the point where "we were receiving at the Institute an average of over 50 autopsies a day and as many significant surgical specimens." 3

In 1945, the year in which hostilities ended, records and tissues from nearly 19,000 autopsies were received at the Museum, along with more than 20,000 surgical specimens. 4 Colonel Ash spoke truly when he said, "the trickle of materials of a decade ago has swollen into a torrent." 5

The "torrent" might have overwhelmed the Museum staff if, during the period of preparedness before the United States became an active belligerent, there had not been thought out a planned decentralization of the pathological facilities and activities of the Army. On 11 December 1941 — 4 days after Pearl Harbor — the new system was put into effect by The Surgeon General's Circular Letter No. 121, subsequently modified in Circular Letter No. 141, of 29 July 1943, and repeated in the War Department's Technical Bulletin 99, issued 11 March 1944.

The new system deployed the limited number of trained pathologists at the points where they would be able to serve most effectively. It was recognized that there simply were not enough pathologists to go around among all the medical installations, but there were enough to staff regional centers for his-